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D. JAMES KENNEDY FACT CHECKS THE DA VINCI CODE IN DOCUMENTARY

Fort Lauderdale—Author and Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy enlists a band of scholars, theologians, and authors to fact check The Da Vinci Code in the new one-hour television documentary, The Da Vinci Delusion. The program aired May 13, 14 nationwide-just days before The Da Vinci Code movie debuted worldwide, and is now available on DVD from Coral Ridge Ministries. The program will re-air November 25, 26 on The Coral Ridge Hour.

Shot in Paris, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and elsewhere, The Da Vinci Delusion features 14 experts, Protestant and Catholic, who test Da Vinci Code assertions against evidence from history and the Bible.

The roster of fact checkers includes Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University; Darrell Bock, New Testament scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary; Kerby Anderson, president of Probe Ministries; Janet Parshall, host of Janet Parshall's America; William Donohue, president of the Catholic League; Erwin Lutzer, author of The Da Vinci Deception; Sandra Miesel, Catholic journalist and medievalist; Gary Habermas, author of The Historical Jesus; and Lee Strobel, coauthor of Exploring the Da Vinci Code.

"Although The Da Vinci Code is a murder mystery novel, it claims to be based on facts, and those so-called facts attack the very heart of Christianity," said Dr. Kennedy, the author of more than 65 books and one of America's most-watched television ministers.

It is author Dan Brown's claim to facticity-and eager readers who have snapped up 40 million copies of his potboiler worldwide-which make a Christian response so acutely needed.

Brown tells readers on the novel's first page that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." Many believe that claim. One-third of Canadians who have read The Da Vinci Code (some 20 percent of the population) believe Brown's theories and think that descendants of Jesus are alive today, according to a 2005 National Geographic poll.

Even a New York Daily News book reviewer has sipped the Kool-Aid, writing that Brown's "research is impeccable"-a claim Brown trumpets on his website.

Well, maybe not.

"Everything in The Da Vinci Code is wrong, except Paris is in France; London is in England and Leonardo da Vinci painted pictures. All else is fabrication," says Sandra Miesel, coauthor of The Da Vinci Hoax.

"Don't they have editors at Doubleday in New York; don't they have fact checkers?" exclaims Paul Maier, coauthor of The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction? "Put it this way," he said, "there is not one ranking scholar in the entire world who supports what Dan Brown has done with history."

The one-hour documentary takes up key Da Vinci Code claims, including:

Jesus and Mary Magdalene were man and wife. "We don't have any evidence anywhere in any kind of document of any sort that Jesus was married" -Darrell Bock
"The New Testament is false testimony" (p. 345 of The Da Vinci Code). "The four Gospels were written during the life and the times of those who were the eyewitnesses of Jesus. Now, more importantly, … they were also written during the life and times of the skeptics, who could refute anything that was said." -Kerby Anderson

There were 80 gospel accounts of Christ's life. "Frankly, there are no written Gospels from the same time frame that are even in the picture." -Gary Habermas

The Roman emperor Constantine gave us the New Testament. "Totally false. He had nothing to do with it whatever. … The Canon was pretty well set in concrete about 150 A.D." -Paul Maier

The divinity of Jesus is an invention of fourth-century church leaders at the Council of Nicea. "That is bunk. If you look at the documents, and we have men, like Eusebius, who were there, what happened at Nicea is because the early Church believed in the deity of Jesus." -Erwin Lutzer

The Da Vinci Delusion looks at more mundane errors as well. Dan Brown tells readers that Silas, a self-punishing albino monk/assassin, belongs to Opus Dei, a Catholic prelature. Not possible. Opus Dei has no monks. Its purpose, in fact, is to energize Catholic lay people.

Brown also writes that an organization created to keep alive the alleged hidden truth about the marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene dates to 1099. Actually, that organization, the Priory of Sion, goes back just 50 years, to when French anti-Semitic con man Pierre Plantard invented it out of whole cloth.

"In time, the 'Da Vinci myth' will be discarded into the dustbin of history, along with all of the other attempts to discredit Christ, while the Gospel truth will continue to spread," said Dr. Kennedy, coauthor with Jerry Newcombe of The Da Vinci Myth versus the Gospel Truth. "The tragedy is that in the interim, some people will miss salvation because they reject the Gospel truth and believe the Da Vinci myth, or something like it."

The Da Vinci Delusion is a production of Coral Ridge Ministries, which produced the 2000 award-winning Who Is This Jesus, a prime-time response to ABC's Search for Jesus.

To request interviews with Dr. Kennedy or The Da Vinci Delusion producers Jerry Newcombe and John Rabe, please contact John Aman at j.aman@crministries.org or (954) 334-5330.

Dr. D. James Kennedy is president of Coral Ridge Ministries, a Christian broadcast organization with radio and television programming that reaches into 200 nations.